1 posts from July 1995

Sunday, July 02, 1995

The shirtless young man on the 10-speed bike was lucky-or perhaps I was lucky-that I didn't chase after him in order that we might exchange views about what a pig and a moron he was.

He'd been riding 75 yards or so ahead of us southbound on the bicycle path that leads into the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe last weekend when suddenly he stopped, straddled his bike and heaved a plastic beverage container into the adjacent and otherwise pristine creek.

I've been radicalized lately about litter-three decades after Lady Bird Johnson made such a position fashionable, I know-and am feeling increasingly volcanic. I barely restrained myself when a smoker tossed a butt at my feet outside a coffee shop on North Broadway the week before, the same week I actually picked up a plastic Evian bottle that a motorist in front of me dropped out her window at a stoplight on Irving Park Road and hurled it back at her car as we drove along.

I date my obsession back to the last Saturday in April when our family adopted a mutt from the Anti-Cruelty Society. I gladly took on the responsibility of walking her several times a day-walking a dog is its own form of meditation, with a bit of exercise and spontaneous socializing thrown in.

This caused me, for the first time, to pause frequently and keep my eyes low to the ground-minding the leash, monitoring the digestive processes and so on. And there I began noticing that an alarming number of people evidently regard my Northwest Side neighborhood as their personal trash can.

Your neighborhood, too, no doubt. Daniel Syrek, a civil engineer who is one of the nation's leading experts on litter,estimates that the average person passes by 12,000 scraps of paper, plastic wrappers, bottles, cans, cartons and other pieces of trash every day.

"We don't look at most of them, of course," said Syrek, who heads the Sacramento-based Institute for Applied Research, a consulting firm that performs and collects studies on this annoying practice. "They're on the side of the road, in alleys, up against buildings, and they're often pretty small."

Candy and gum wrappers, say, which I now see everywhere, or those solicitations the size of business cards that entrepreneurs stick under windshield wipers. In my peripheral vision, as I track the dog's hindquarters, I have seen doughnut boxes, grocery circulars, empty cigarette packs, napkins, tuna cans and the predictable foam, plastic and paper residue of the fast-food giants-yet at a quick glance you'd probably say our neighborhood is relatively clean.

What infuriates me nevertheless about this drizzle of litter is the message of contempt and selfishness borne by each deliberately dropped shard (60 percent of it, according to Syrek).

"My momentary convenience is more important than the appearance of this community," says the tossed wrapper or the discarded flask. "Someone else can tend to my mess."

This attitude, in its way, is a form of the insolence and presumption of the graffiti vandal. It doesn't surprise me at all that Syrek's data show the majority of litterbugs (an ancient word with, in my opinion, insufficient fangs) are adolescent or young adult males, who usually litter when they're in a group, not alone.

Deliberate littering, then, for such practitioners as that lad at the Botanic Garden is a form of rebellion, of defying convention for those too wimpy to pierce their cheeks and run away from home. It's not exactly giving the finger to polite society; more like the thumbs down.

This helps explain why littering is still common despite decades of slogans and scoldings. The Illinois Department of Transportation spent $6.3 million picking it off our roadways last year, part of the $1.7 billion spent nationwide, according to Syrek's estimates.

Whether it's getting better or worse is hard to say, though photo measurements taken by Chicago Clean Streak, the largest Keep America Beautiful affiliate in the country, show a 36 percent decrease in litter here since 1988. This may be due to the agency's educational efforts, which will include a neighborhood-outreach pilot program later this year.

Should agents of this outreach program chance upon a slightly deranged man trailing a patchy dog and incoherently railing at passersby as he gathers debris in the gutter, my advice is don't approach him. He may, by then, be dangerous.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.